An estimated 250,000 people have CFS/ME in the UK, 1,000,000 in the USA and 17,000,000 worldwide.
But what do these 17 million people look like? Well a group of us who are on Toby Morrison’s online program thought it would be great to raise awareness to create a video & a collage of a load of our faces.
As you can see from the collage and video below this horrible illness that effects so many people and from the outside a lot of us look like everything is hunky dory.
In a previous post (Link) I talked about hard it is when people say things like:
“You don’t look ill” “It is all in your head” “CFS doesn’t exist”
All things that people suffering from CFS/ME have probably heard a million times, either from medical professions, people at work/school or even friends and family.
This can be extremely difficult and disheartening for us 17 million people, what you need to keep in mind is that CFS is real, what you are feeling is real, and it can get better.
I still find this hard to deal with, but am taking one of two different approaches:
Ignore – Try not to care what others think
Explain– Try to explain to others what CFS is and how it effects you
If you liked this post you might like:
- The Ugly Truth of Bad Day with CFS… But its ok!
- The Rainbow in the Storm- Checking in with CFS/ME
- How are you? The not so simple answer to that simple question
- The Impact of Mindset on Physical Health
Or for a full catalogue of my CFS/ME related posts check out my CFS/ME Index
